Arkham's Littlest Angel
by Vika Grace
Summary: After 17 years in Gotham City's foster system, Commissioner Gordon decides it's finally time to tell Bonnie who her parents are. Of course, when your mom and dad are the two craziest lunatics the world has ever seen, there's bound to be some backlash.
1. Chapter 1

The chair was cold, the room reeked of rubbing alcohol. I blinked, forcing my eyes to adjust to the artificial brightness of the tiny room.

Standard procedure, they told me.

The rat-like man behind the desk glanced up at me for the thousandth time in the fifteen minutes I had been sitting there. Our eyes met for a brief, awkward second. I jerked my head towards the bookshelf leaning against the wall and decided to scan the titles for anything I recognized. I was vaguely interested in mental health, and read more than a few books on it in my time. I figured he and I must've had at least a little overlap in reading material, but all of these books looked like they were written before life itself began on Earth, and I was somehow not too shocked me and this guy literally had nothing in common.

He peeked his black eyes out from behind the papers, "you passed, surprisingly." The last word was more mumbled than spoken. I raised an eyebrow. I'm sure I did as well as any seventeen year old in the system could do. Gotham had a lacking social services department, to say the least.

"Well," I brushed a lock of yellow hair out of my eyes. "That's a relief." My forced laugh evaporated into an awkward silence as the good doctor studied me with obvious concern.

"Yes, well, I suppose it is."

Okay, this guy clearly had something against me. Not my problem.

I looked down and distantly noted that my nail polish had chipped already. When I looked up, Dr. Rat-like was standing and motioning me to the door, clearly eager to have me out of his office as soon as humanly possible. He practically pushed me out the door.

"Here's your evaluation," he shoved the papers into my hands. "Show them to Shannon and she'll take care of you from there."

He disappeared back into his office without another word.

I looked down at the papers, now a little crinkled thanks to the good doctor. The top page was a cover page, only stating that this was the mental evaluation of Bonnie H. Marrant. My fingers practically burned with temptation to tear off the cover page and read the inside. I looked around to see if anyone was watching, only to meet the eyes of Commissioner Gordon.

Of course.

He smiled and waved me over. He was standing by the front desk, where a middle-aged woman, whom I'm assuming was the mysterious Shannon, was seated behind the wall of papers and office supplies.

"Big day, Kiddo," he shook my hand. "You ready?"

I nodded, a grin spreading across my face. Ready? I'd been waiting for this day pretty much my entire life. I've never been more ready for anything. I eyed the manila folder in his left hand. Anticipation flooded into every fiber of my being.

Suddenly I remembered the papers, "you want these?"

The commissioner's eyes widened, "oh, yes, thank you." He peeked under the cover page, smiled, and looked back up at me.

"Shall we?"

He most certainly heard my pounding heartbeat as we went to a little conference room. If bringing a kid to Arkham Asylum to tell them who their parents are didn't get the heart rate up, the kid is probably dead. My stomach twisted itself into anxious knots, threatening me to re-visit my breakfast. He settled into a hideous green chair, me plopping into an identical one across from him. I practically bounced up and down on the over-stuffed cushion.

 _I'm gonna know my paaarents, I'm gonna know my paaarents! I'm gon-_

"Okay, Bonnie, I need your full attention."

"I'm listenin', sir, I promise." My cheek muscles were starting to cramp from all this wild grinning. I couldn't help it. The commissioner just looked at me with sad eyes before reading the paper he slid from the manila folder.

"Mother: Harleen Quinzel."

What? Wait. What?

I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

"Father: name unknown, generally known as 'The Joker'."

I just sat there, staring, not looking, just staring.

"Bonnie?"

It was like the commissioner was a thousand miles away on another planet, underground, and underwater. I hardly heard my name over the sound of blood pounding in my ears.

Then I threw up.


	2. Chapter 2

"-onnie? Bonnie, are you alright, kiddo?"

The fog around my head started to clear and I could make out big, brown, commissioner eyes trained on me.

I nodded.

The chair was hideous anyways.

"I understand this is hard for you to hear, trust me, we're doing everything we can to make this easier for you."

Easy? This wasn't my first mental evaluation. I'd been taking them yearly ever since I could remember. Try telling that to your best friends in middle school. Just try it. I promise you Hell hath no fury like a couple of nasty, pre-teen girls.

"Wha-, it's just-, I don't-" half-words garbled out of my mouth. I tried to regain some shred of coherence, but one step forward was two steps back. I probably looked like a lunatic, babbling and covered in my own puke.

"Why now?" I finally managed to choke out. "Why wait to tell me now?"

The commissioner gave me a sorry look, "we wanted to make sure you could handle the news. And, we wanted to make sure you could handle a meeting."

What?

"A meeting?" I blinked, dragging my sweatshirt sleeve across my mouth to wipe off the stray bile.

He nodded. "With your mother, your father doesn't know of your existence, and we'd like to keep it that way for your own safety."

"Mother." I mumbled the word to myself. It tasted foreign.

"We'll get you cleaned up first, then we can go down and meet her. How's that sound, kiddo?"

He made it sound like it was any other mother-daughter reunion, not this random foster girl meeting _Harley Quinn,_ one of the _biggest_ villains of all time, who also just so happens to be the girl's mom.

Could this day get any weirder?

Distantly, I wondered if this was all a bad dream. I'd wake up soon, and be back in bed at Miss Christine's apartment, surrounded by floral prints and those creepy china dolls the old lady likes to collect.

Something was said about me going to the bathroom to clean myself up.

"What?"

The commissioner glanced at his watch, "we have fifteen minutes until they bring her up."

I stumbled out of the room and followed the signs to the tiny ladies room to the left of Shannon's desk. My hands caught the edge of the cracked, porcelain sink. Trembling, I dragged my eyes up to the mirror. Same big blue eyes, same blonde hair, same Bonnie.

Same Bonnie.

I steeled my eyes at the frightened little girl in the mirror.

"You're fine, you are not your parents. You are _not_ your parents. You're not-" the words were lost in a sob that rose deep somewhere in the part of me that used to draw family portraits, make up their names, dream about what they were like. It was that part of me who allowed that hope that my parents had tragically lost me somehow and were, maybe even at this very moment, desperately searching for their Bonnie. Parents that were good, kind, sane.

Sane.

I looked down, noticing my sweatshirt. Carefully, I pulled it over my head and threw the soiled garment in the sink. Stupid, weak stomach. I had an old concert t-shirt on, not ideal for the first time my mother would see me, but not much was ideal today.

After splashing some water on my face and a very stern pep-talk to the mirror, I left the sanctuary of the bathroom. The commissioner was waiting just outside the door.

"Ready?"

"I guess so," I mumbled.

We descended down into the dark. Gray concrete steps disappeared into an abyss where they kept my mother.

Wow, when did I start calling Harley Quinn my mother?

A sigh of relief rushed out of me when the steps finally ended. Thighs burning, I followed the commissioner through a set of steel doors, and then another set, and then another, and another, and, well, you get the picture. We moved quickly, and I found myself silently wishing I bothered to get in shape. I mean, I've always been skinny, so I never found the need to do much about fitness.

The plain, off-white hallways started getting doors dotted along the walls after the fifth steel door. All the rooms behind them appeared empty, which I found a little unsettling. It felt like I was walking through a graveyard where all the bodies had been removed but the stones were left behind.

The utter silence made my skin crawl.

The commission finally stopped outside a door and ducked inside. It was small, furnished with a small metal stable, a single chair on either side. He motioned for me to sit, while he leaned against the far wall.

My hands were shaking.

There was noise down the hall. I picked my head up, eyes glued to the door.

Nothing prepares you for this.

Two burly guards dragged in a woman, reckless blonde hair hiding her face. The prisoner picked up her head, blowing the hair off her face, a wild smile stretching on her pale cheeks when she saw me. Blue eyes, identical to mine, looked at me like I was the most beautiful miracle the world had ever seen.

She let out a small laugh, "hey puddin.'"


	3. Chapter 3

I just stared.

What else could I do?

What else was I supposed to do?

Say something. Well, what do you say in a situation like this? I mean, there's really no book out there sporting "How to Greet Your Mother for the First Time When She's Harley Quinn" on the cover.

Not that I've ever seen, anyways.

The guards led her to the metal chair across from me. She fell into the seat with an exaggerated flop.

"Ya look just like me," she giggled, her thick New York accent overwhelming every syllable.

I nervously tucked a stray lock of blonde hair behind my ear. Suddenly aware that mine and her's were the same exact golden color.

I looked up and our eyes met.

"Hi mom."

I mumbled it. Unaware my lips were even moving until I had spoken the word. Mom. My mom. She was sitting here, right in front of me at last.

"You're here," I choked out, unsure of why, exactly, I was holding back tears.

"Aw puddin'," she slid a pale hand across the table, her chains scraping the metal, and took hold of mine. "I'll be outta here soon, ahnuff, you'll see."

The guards raised their brows. She'd die in this prison if they had anything to say about it. I knew that.

"So," she flicked her eyes up at the commissioner, standing protectively behind me now. "Ya finally got around to letting me see my _own_ child, _huh_?" she tossed her hair back. "It only took ya _17_ years."

The commissioner was quiet, and at first I didn't think he was going to answer her.

"We thought it best for the child," he said with an eerie calm. "That, given the nature of her parents' situation, we wait until she was ready."

Harley erupted into laughter, "that's the biggest loada' bull-" She paused and looked at me. "Not in front of the baby." She strained her neck to look sweetly back at her guards. "No swearin' in front of my Bonnie-girl, ya hear me?" The guards shook their heads and shifted their gazes to the non-descript corners of the room.

"Ya miss your mama, puddin'?" She grinned at me.

I nodded, I guess I did. But I didn't have _her_ in mind.

Finally I had a mother, but she might as well be a thousand miles away for all the good it would do me. The years of imagining unsung lullabies were over. I no longer had the benefit of the doubt. The mother I always thought would swoop in and take me home at last didn't exist. She never did.

Her hand held tight to mine, blue eyes teeming with emotion.

"I missed _you,_ puddin'." She glared up at the commissioner. "It just ain't right they'd keep my baby 'way from me. _That's_ sick."

"Harley, we took her away for her own good," Gordon pointed out. I just held her hand, too numb to speak. It was like I was floating above the room, watching it all unfold.

"What can be better for her than her own mother?" She snarled, her grip tightening, pulling me back into the moment.

"Mom," I slid my hand from hers. "I would've grown up in an asylum."

Her face darkened.

"You wouldn'ta had ta if they just let me go," she said quietly. Neither of us noticed our eyes watering until tears had slipped down both our cheeks.

Lost years.

That's what was so sad here.

Lost years.


End file.
